


snow in venice (i'll be on my way home)

by fredastaire



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: + the rest of the losers, Author Projecting onto Eddie Kaspbrak, Christmas Adjacent, Denial of Feelings, Eddie Kaspbrak-centric, Feelings Acknowledgement, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found FUCKING Family baby, Gay Disaster Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Pre-Slash, Songfic, Stream of Consciousness, Vomiting, more like, no beta we die like men, oh yeah thats very important, there's no real plot. it's just feelings., this is how i process shit now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredastaire/pseuds/fredastaire
Summary: The first vacation Eddie ever goes on is to St. Augustine, Florida, and it's a small disaster. It's like something in him has unwound from simply stepping out of Derry. The aftermath is even worse. Eddie doesn't do well with change.OR:Eddie Kaspbrak comes to terms with how much he loves and is loved.OR:Love, home, family, and the mortifying ordeal of being seventeen.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 47





	snow in venice (i'll be on my way home)

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: they don't get together in this one! also big EMETOPHOBIA CW. I talk about nausea/vomiting a lot in this one & eddie vomits at one point but it's not super graphic
> 
> first of all: this is my first work in this fandom & it's also my first work on ao3 in over a year so if it's bad it's uhhh not my fault. second of all: this is based off that time my mom had a breakdown and we went to st augustine for four days and it was around christmas so they had the night of lights (https://www.visitstaugustine.com/event/nights-lights) and i wanted to go on the bridge to see them and my mom said no so my siblings and i wandered around and bonded and it invoked a lot of confusing emotions in me and i started writing this as soon as we got home to process it all  
> also, this is kind of an amalgamation of book canon and muschetti canon but it falls more in line with muschetti, at least timeline wise. the first night of lights was in 1993, so muschetti canon eddie would have been 17? i think? also, in this universe: mike's parents are alive, and the losers dont forget, but they r all deeply traumatized by the clown and they all will definitely get therapy as adults. bev stays in derry but she kind of gets adopted? maybe? It's not very fleshed out but she's there and her father is not. YES this is self induldgent NO i will not adhere to any single canon NEXT. QUESTION.
> 
> the title is from snow in venice by elizaveta & yes this is a songfic. i am legally required to write an elizaveta songfic for every fandom im in

The road trip to St. Augustine two days earlier was unremarkable.

+++

The engine of the Kaspbraks’ blue Pontiac Bonneville stammered angrily, and Eddie Kaspbrak cringed. Eddie was no car expert, but he knew a distressed sound when he heard it. It sounded like a balloon deflating, which felt thematically appropriate for his life. Eddie was also pretty sure _he'd_ made that exact sound once or twice.

The car hadn’t actually been used much in the fifteen years they’d had it, because Derry was a miniature town where you could get anywhere by foot, bike, or bus. But, two days ago, they’d driven _twenty fucking hours_ from _Derry, Maine to St. Augustine, Florida._ Sonia Kaspbrak had, in the past four days, put this car through hell and back.

“It’s okay, girl. Me, too,” he mumbled to it. He placed a hand on the dashboard and pat it, trying to provide some semblance of comfort.

Sonia Kaspbrak had left the car some ten minutes ago, to walk to a little pharmacy down the way. She’d demanded that Eddie stay in the car, and had left the keys in the ignition. Eddie couldn’t drive, so he assumed this was some kind of sick power display.

Recently their relationship had turned sour. Well, not recently. More like it had been rotting slowly for Eddie’s entire life. Recently, though, she was all _impromptu trips to Florida to see my sister! You and your cousins will get along so well! You need to get some friends that aren’t those_ boys (‘boys’ said with the same tone one might say ‘motherfuckers’ ‘idiots’ or ‘fuckheads’). Then again, she’d always been kind of crazy. That, or this was her idea of a joke. You know, maybe it had all just been a giant prank on Eddie from the beginning. ' _You thought those pills were real? Haha! Pranked!_ ’ Eddie supposed, in a way, she was a giant jokester, just a different brand to Richie’s.

Eddie was a little bit bitter this evening. He was holed up in the Pontiac, which was parked right alongside the Matazanas bay. When Eddie looked through the right window, he could see the Bridge of Lions, long and regal and stretching into the distance. People and cars milled about on top of it, framed by a hazy sunset. He couldn’t help but feel _jealous_ , watching them. He honed in on a couple swinging their hands between each other. The woman’s shoulders were shaking in a laugh and the man was gazing down at her fondly, probably not expecting the expression to be caught. Or, he simply didn’t care.

 _Eddie’s_ vacation so far could be characterized by passive aggressive comments and over-sweet smiles, traded between his aunt, uncle, and mother. Their relationship was stilted, and Eddie could tell his aunt and uncle pitied him, if only because they thought he was lying about the pills for attention. Or worse, they thought Eddie was deranged, that it had been passed along through his mother to him. They would probably still take Sonia’s side if he ever argued with them. His cousins and him did not get along much better. It was a family built on carefully crafted mistrust. Eddie knew what love and family looked like, now, at seventeen. It looked like Maggie, Wentworth, and Richie Tozier. It looked like Jessica, William, and Mike Hanlon.

The Losers were even more of a family than the Kaspbraks (Eddie’s extended family weren’t the ‘Kaspbraks’ because the name came from his fathers’ side, but Eddie’d never known the real Kaspbraks, anyway). They were a strange kind of family, certainly not as permanent as Sonia, but better company than she ever was. Eddie hadn’t seen a single one of them in four days. Four days! That hadn’t happened in years. Even when he was grounded, Richie or Bill or Mike would find some way to him. The Losers had grown inseparable, the clown did it, or Bowers did it, taught them the importance of safety in packs. And they were stronger for it, and Eddie had never felt more _himself_ . But they were seventeen now, and Eddie could feel the age pulling at their seams, picking at their tightly woven family (but they weren’t Eddie’s _real_ family, never could be, not for real), and he wasn’t sure what he’d do without them. The others had plans. The others had always been more dreamers than Eddie was. They talked about finding fame and love and marriage and he just wasn’t _sure_.

When Eddie imagined himself outside of Derry, he imagined a tiny apartment in New York City while he attended NYU. Daily correspondence with Sonia.

Technically, Eddie was outside of Derry right now. It didn’t feel like it. He felt like he’d dragged the worst parts of Derry with him. Don’t get him wrong -- St. Augustine was gorgeous and bright. But, it was hard not to look around and see everything he logically knew he’d never have. Like he was stuck in a Derry bubble even here.

The old blue Pontiac sputtered at him again, as if to say, _It’s okay, boy. Me, too._

Eddie reached over to pull the keys out of the ignition. The Pontiac sputtered one last time, until silence finally fell. All he could hear now were the gentle waves of the Bay. He leaned his head back against the headrest. What the hell was he _doing_? It was the day before Christmas! More than that, it was the first time he’d been alone in three days. He was going to milk that for all it was worth. Eddie clenched his eyes shut.

As these things go, he was disturbed not two minutes later by a silent flood of light outside of the car. Instinctively, he turned away from the window, but the light didn’t stop, warming down on him from all angles. Eddie’s eyes fluttered open.

In retrospect, he should have remembered. He’d seen the tourist flyers, advertising **_Night of Lights 1993! Switching on the city for the first time!_ ** but he’d assumed it was some tourist trap thing. The little neon letters on those flyers didn’t do this any justice. The lights were string lights, strung across everything that stood. They twined around palm tree trunks, framed rooftops of shops, and reflected gently off the Matazanas Bay so that it shined, too. The sky was dark now, and there weren’t as many stars here as there were in Derry, but the string lights dotted the entire city like stars fallen. They were golden and warm and Eddie decided in a moment this was the best part of St. Augustine.

In the center of the display was the Bridge of Lions. The lights were strung along its sides, outlining it in a glow that made it seem ephemeral. The pillars that stood on it were also burning with light from the inside, and Eddie was falling in love a little bit.

Eddie’s hand found his camera, hanging by his hip. It had been a Christmas gift from Richie. It was _sickeningly_ sweet. (Richie had hung it around his neck like he was knighting him, and then let out a short laugh. “What?” Eddie’s eyes had shot open, looking down. The camera strap - a piece of fabric Richie had found and cut up - was far too long for his body. It hung a little low on his hips, instead of above them like it would have on Richie.)

Richie had demanded that he fill up the roll on this trip. The fifteen (out of thirty-six) pictures that were on the roll so far were as follows:

**1-5**. The Losers at their gift exchange. It was the light of Eddie’s holiday season every year. It had taken place a week before Eddie left for Florida, because he wouldn't be home for Christmas. Miss Uris had walked into Stan’s room, and seen six of her son’s friends huddled in a circle with exactly six wrapped boxes stacked in front of each of them. She didn’t know what newfangled ritual they were performing, but she knew enough about Stanley’s odd friends to promptly exit the room.

  1. ****Old buildings they passed on their way into St. Augustine. Almost every building had orange-red tiled roofs and detailings. Some had eroded carvings in languages Eddie didn’t recognize. Eddie thought Mike would have liked them, laden with history as they were. _A city stuck in the past,_ he’d thought, _but in a much different way to Derry._


  1. ****The ocean from Eddie’s window in their beach house (not ‘their’ beach house, but the one they were staying in), at night. It was dark and raging, literally foaming at the mouth. It crawled up the first five steps to the house. Eddie had been terrified and thrilled.


  1. ****The ocean from Eddie’s window in their beach house, in the morning. It was lighter now, the water calm. Eddie thought the seafoam looked like cotton candy.


  1. ****The shopping district with his cousins, the only time Eddie left the beach house without Sonia. The photos were a little blurry. You could make out seas upon seas of people, entwining with palm trees. Eddie had been thinking about Beverly, then.


  1. ****The Bridge of Lions, in the daylight. Ben would have loved the Bridge of Lions, with its strong legs and little lion statues on each end. It was a bascule bridge, which meant at the middle it had two pieces that could lift up and let boats through. Eddie knew that from Ben himself. It was regal and sturdy in architecture. (In the present, the pillars on top of it burned from the inside out; Ben loved things that were bright and burned)



**11-15.** **_Ripley’s Believe It or Not!_** Eddie’s cousins had gotten to choose to go here, because they were older and quote, “wiser” (debatable) than him. It was garish and cheesy in every aspect. If Eddie was honest, a lot of it kind of freaked him out. He hated it, and he thought it was fucked up.

Richie would have loved it. Stan might’ve too, because Stan was a weird bastard, but Richie would have fit right in. Eddie could picture him there, in his yellow button up with Hot Fries and fire insignias printed on it. He would slide his hand his arms around the wax figures no matter how many people had touched them before and make stupid comments and grin over at Eddie’s terrified face at the _gross_ displays. Richie would have the fucking time of his life.

(It was easy to see the people you loved anywhere. Even if they were a thousand miles away. Because that’s where love lives: everywhere, in everything, all at once.)

In the present, Eddie pressed his camera to the window glass. He started to snap pictures of the palm trees and buildings and, most importantly, the bridge. He liked the bridge a lot. Richie would have liked it, too, he decided. Richie was stupid and loud, but he was also somewhat of a romantic. That wasn’t wide knowledge. It was reserved for boys who’d been stuck to his side since they were seven, girls with fiery hair that shoehorned their way into his life, and 'hot Jewish blondes', but it was true nonetheless. Richie would probably like long walks on the beach and holding hands with someone on the Bridge of Lions. St. Augustine was practically _made_ for Richie Tozier, and that’s why it fucking _sucked_ so much that he wasn’t here.

Eddie imagined him; sliding a cassette into the car’s player so that some soft-toned obscure music from like, the 50s, could play. Sitting back and watching the way the lights and the sunset and the Bay played against each other. And then Richie would glance over at Eddie. Eddie imagined his fingers playing in the space between their seats, and then he imagined those fingers sliding towards him. Eddie imagined him, **intertwining--** _backtrack_ , Eddie, _backtrackbacktrackbacktrack,_ Eddie rewound the tape in his head.

Eddie wanted things that he knew the other boys didn’t. He knew he struggled with that. They were little infatuations, clipped onto something bigger, badder, and uglier inside of him. Sometimes, Eddie’s skin itched and burned over it. Right under the surface, like there were little bugs crawling between his flesh. Scabies, he thought, but he never got rashes, just itched and burned and felt inexplicably dirty. He thought about them laying eggs under his skin. Sometimes, this thing felt like the thing that would eat him up from the inside. Like he could think one off thought about Richie’s wonky smile and he’d break out in boils and the bugs would crawl out of his pores.

Eddie breathed and it came out shaky. He could feel his heart or his lungs or his ribs squeezing tight. Fucking _backtrack._

He focused on the smell of oceanwater (salty and sweet). The golden little lights, obscured ever so slightly by wet eyes, and his sweaty hands rubbing against his jeans, and the faint chatter of people walking down the sidewalk. It was something Mike had taught him, focusing on the things he could smell and see and feel and hear. Objective Facts, Eddie called them in his mind. It helped to not be all in his head all the time.

If Richie had been there, he probably wouldn’t have been so in his head. All his worries quelled by music he claimed to hate. Thoughts expelled by light laughter in one of those fragile moments that Richie and Eddie had sometimes, because they were always so close.

Richie and Eddie were an Objective Fact. A Universal Constant.

Eddie was calmer now. Kind of ironic, how thinking about Richie could make him panic and calm down. 

It terrified Eddie, that this might not be something he ever grew out of. But then... maybe that was not such a bad thing _._ It made Eddie’s skin crawl, but not Richie himself. It had never really been about Richie himself. They were built on carefully crafted trust, like _I will let you do this to me and I will let you change me and I will let you do it for years_.

Richie made Eddie understand what love looked like.

Eddie jolted and shut down that train of thought so _fucking_ quick. It was too late. His body felt like the one with a million little lights shining from him now, like he’d been switched on for the first time in his life. _Love_ was never the word he’d used, but once it got in his head it wouldn’t get out. Losers, home, Richie, love. It was a brilliant game of word association.

In the car, Eddie buried his face in his hands, feeling nauseous. He didn’t want to vomit in this poor car. This girl had had enough already. Similarly: Eddie had had enough already.

 _Fuck being seventeen,_ he thought. _And fuck St. Augustine._

And when his mother got back into the car, he asked if they could go on the bridge. She looked at the bridge, and then at Eddie, her gaze cold and disciplining, and asked “Why at all would you want to do that?” Like she didn't see the lights at all. She had a way of doing that, of not seeing the things that were right in front of her.

“No reason,” he said. The only thing he could think about was how, if someone would touch him now, his skin would be burning. And maybe he’d been burning his whole life long.

+++

The road trip home a day later was unremarkable.

+++

And now, at home, Eddie stared at his walls.

The piss-colored walls he’d despised his entire life stared right back at him.

He couldn't help but think this felt reminiscent of the summer of '89, only it was the winter of '93 now. He didn't feel less terrified.

Ever since '89, they'd been grieving. Bill and Bev more than anyone because they'd lost people, but to some extent they all felt like they'd lost something, even if they'd won. Bill and Bev gravitated towards each other and their relationship was what they both seemed to need to keep themselves upright for the next few months. The relationship didn't last, and eventually the Losers grew into the change. Bev got adopted by a nice couple who lived in Derry. Bill moved neighborhoods. It was a lot of shifting around, but they all stuck together like magnets that couldn't exactly fall out of their orbits.

Eddie had been grieving his relationship with his mother, in a way, because it felt like the worst tangible loss he experienced.

And that was the last big change Eddie could remember in his life. The last cataclysmic life-realisation, the last deviation from the status quo. But all of the Losers had gone through that. He was alone in this one. As soon as they'd arrived back in Derry, Eddie hadn't known what to do with himself, didn't want to look anyone in the eye, so he holed himself up in his room. He'd stubbornly avoided his mother, eating the frozen meals she so diligently crafted on his bed. He felt gross on the inside, and maybe he was adopting the etiquette to match.

He hated this entire house, but his own room was the worst by far. There wasn’t a single part of him there, haunted by hand-me-down clothes and his father’s old bookshelves. Contrary to popular belief, Eddie Kaspbrak was not boring. Well- Richie said he was, but they both knew he didn’t mean that. Richie may have been the garish overtalkative one, but Eddie was far from the perfect little boy his mother wanted: Christian, calm, polite, _str--_.

Eddie stood up.

 _Contrary to popular belief,_ Eddie Kaspbrak was not boring. At least, not boring enough to warrant this kind of room. Eddie liked ripped jeans and comicbooks and cars if he knew them good enough. He also liked seafoam and lights and stars.

There was one hint of those things now. It was sat on his bedside table; a neon flyer advertising the Night of Lights. He’d picked it up after experiencing the actual night itself. He had wildly conflicting feelings on St. Augustine (as did he on most things) but he’d wanted a little piece of it to take home anyway. A piece of the disaster that was the first and only vacation he’d ever gone on. Eddie wasn’t sure what he’d ever do with it, but it was nice to have. Like physical proof he’d ever gotten out of here. Like physical proof any of them could.

And, God, the Losers knew him better than anyone. In the wake of St. Augustine, he was sure they would be able to see the change in the bags under his eyes and the creases in his face. They would be able to see how unwell he was doing, and that was number one on the list of things he was dreading now. And he was going to be seeing them this evening. He had no idea how he’d let himself be coaxed into it, but it was inevitable. They always found their way to him no matter how he tried to block them out. And he _missed_ them, wanted to hear about their Christmases, but didn’t want them to see him.

Eddie had talked to them, over the phone a few times. Once during the road trip, when Eddie had stood at the side of the road and digged through his pockets for change. He'd dialed Richie's number on the telephone, fingers nimble with familiarity. He knew it better than his own number. That was saying something, with the amount of times Sonia had grabbed his arm and firmly written their number on its underside. Richie picked up on the first ring like he'd been waiting by the phone. Eddie had complained and mimicked the sounds the car was making.

It was the first time he would _see_ them since Florida, though.

Eddie glanced out the window now. The town was covered in snow, which brightened Eddie’s mood considerably. It was a stark (no pun intended) contrast to St. Augustine. Driving back up to Maine had just been like piling increasingly warmer clothes onto himself at every state line. It was comforting, though, the gentle snow. Snow in Maine was like seafoam in Florida, consistent and bright and alive even when the rest of the world was asleep. Snow in Maine was more like home.

As it neared the time they’d all agreed to meet up at, Eddie grabbed his camera. The roll was full now. He’d made a point to take pictures on their road trip back, even if both road trips had been absolutely miserable. Well, they’d been as fun as you imagine a road trip with a crazy woman and a teenage hypochondriac would go.

After a moment of consideration, he picked up the flyer and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans. He flicked on the light in his room, and left the curtains open. Sonia didn’t like when he did that, because people could see into the house, but it was a snow day.

Then, Eddie found himself in the bathroom, smiling into the mirror. He pressed into his cheeks with his fingers, like that would make it bleed into his eyes. He tugged at those then, trying to blend his bags into the rest of his face. “I am not having an identity crisis,” he said, confidently. Then, he bounded down the stairs, as quick as he could without his mother reprimanding him. He paused at the living room. “I’m going to Mike’s.” Whatever she said in response was surely judgemental, but it turned to static as Eddie slung his camera over his head. He slipped on a winter coat, gloves, boots, and two scarves, even knowing Richie would tease him for how engulfed in the layers he was. But fuck if he was gonna risk hypothermia.

He left the house, swung his leg over the side of his bike, and started to pedal through town. Being back in Derry was disorienting. Home, he thought, but also not. Bleak, entrapping, but temporary. Eddie and the Losers would be the ones who made it out, and Eddie had the proof in his front pocket.

Mike’s house was a two-story rectangular farmhouse. It had peeling, thin walls and splintered floors but always smelled like cherry pie in summer. Mike’s home was a home that left you with rough feet but a big, full heart. It radiated a homely, inviting energy, and that was few and far between here. As he parked his bike, he could hear voices from the inside, and he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed that. The sounds of home _,_ where home wasn’t _Derry_ , but it was here.

Eddie left his bike against the pile of four other bikes that sat at the top of the pathway. Richie had probably driven Bill in his car -- yeah, that’s right, _car_. Richie Tozier, age seventeen, was in legal possession of a moving vehicle. It was a trashy Buick with wood paneling on the lower half, and it really wasn’t bad at all, but again, Eddie was slightly bitter about it.

No one had shoveled the pathway to the farmhouse yet, and Eddie could see five other pairs of footsteps in the snow. They were slightly faded because it was still snowing. He made fresher ones as he followed them down to the door, snow crunching under his clunky snow boots. When he knocked on the door, there was a burst of yells from inside the house.

Mike opened the door and ushered him in before they could even exchange hellos. “Eddie!” He exclaimed once the door was shut. Eddie smiled as wide as he could when half his face was obscured by two thick layers of scarves.

“Mike!” He said back, but it sounded more like ‘ _mih_!’ Mike laughed lightly and pulled him into a hug. Eddie had to wiggle his arms out from where they were trapped between them to return it.

In winter, the Hanlons’ farmhouse was filled with a hot cocoa and peppermint smell instead. It was festive and warm, and Eddie felt the numbness seeping out of his limbs. He slipped his boots off and wiggled his toes.

Mike led him to the kitchen and pointed towards a cup of Mrs. Hanlon’s signature mint hot cocoa on the counter. Knowing her, she’d made a cup for each of the Losers. Mr. and Mrs. Hanlon accommodated the Losers as if they were their own children. They made space in every area of their home, like an added seven units to their already busy life was nothing. It was a trait passed on to Mike, too, because even though the Losers’ Club had existed before Mike joined, by all accounts it was more like he’d had taken _them_ in. Hanlons carried an ability to make home out of anywhere and family out of anyone in their genes.

There was a communal cheer when Eddie arrived in the living room doorway. Someone imitated trumpets. Ben was the first to stand up and hug him. “Welcome home, Eddie,” he said, smiling. Eddie held his hot cocoa gently by Ben’s side, in an effort to not let it slosh over the side of the mug. He smiled into Ben’s chest.

"You look cozy," was the first thing Richie said, from his place on the ground in front of the TV, a grin splitting his face.

Eddie fumbled, setting his mug aside. He started unwinding the scarves from his neck. “Shut up, Richie, shut up,” he mumbled as he shrugged off his coat, too.

Everyone was bubbling with energy, in a way he thought they could only get when they drank, but they were all sober. Eddie offered an awkward smile, not used to this much intense positive energy focused on him. It was made weirder by the fact that he’d spent a week being given a cold shoulder, and here, he felt like he was going to overheat.

They looked almost the same as he’d left them, and it was like nothing had changed even if at the same time, everything had. Stan was tucked into an armchair in the corner, smiling at Eddie with his eyes, a little dopily, even though he’d _promised_ he wouldn’t miss him. Mike climbed onto the couch, settling himself beside Bill.

“The gang’s all together again!” Richie said, and it hit Eddie, a little late, that they’d _actually_ missed him, that there’d been an empty space here in Derry without him. This realization was fuel to the fire. Eddie, no joke, felt like he might explode. From what, love? That was so cheesy.

Eddie was dragged into the space in front of the fireplace, between Richie and Beverly. Beverly swung an arm around Eddie’s shoulders. Not satisfied with this amount of dragging, she also leaned his head onto her chest so she could place a kiss onto the top of his head. Eddie laughed, one of his legs being forced over Richie’s with the awkwardness of the position. There was a familiarity here that he hadn’t known he’d missed so much. His heart ached and he thought for a moment, _maybe nothing will change at all_.

“I missed you guys so much,” he felt the need to say, to get it out of the way. There was a chorus of sweet little “you too, Eddie”s, and he felt them wash over him the way the ocean had in St. Augustine.

“I was like the wife of a soldier, all ‘when will he come back from the war?’” said Richie, dramatically laying the backside of his palm against his forehead and slumping back, before his tone went back to normal. “It was really fuckin’ boring.”

“St. Augustine wasn’t exactly a riot, either,” he responded. “When _you_ go to Florida, Mikey, you’ll have to take me to Disneyland or something.”

“Deal.” Mike agreed. Then a pause. Then, “You didn’t do _anything_ fun?”

“Not really,” he mumbled back. “Unless you count _Ripley’s_ and awkward family dinners.”

Richie’s eyes widened, “I do count _Ripley’s_!”

“Of course you do.” Beverly Marsh’s chest was not a good angle to roll his eyes at Richie from, but he tried. “It sucked, though, majorly. My cousins are so obnoxious, and my aunt and uncle don’t even like us so I don’t know why we drove _twenty hours_ across the _country_ to see them!”

Beverly raised her hand from where it was draped over Eddie, to pat his cheek. Richie placed his hand on Eddie’s ankle in silent sympathy.

Eddie felt awkward leaving his words hanging in the air, so he rushed to fill the space, “How was your guys..es’ Christmas?” 

“Not as good without you,” said Ben, honestly.

Richie grabbed at his ankle again, “Bill got _The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening!_ ”

“As if I’m letting you two get your grubby little hands on my Game Boy,” said Bill.

“What about my grubby _big_ hands?” Richie asked.

“Skateboard.” Mike grinned down at Eddie, and that was _all_ Eddie needed to hear.

“ _Really?_ ” he asked, incredulous. His voice gained pitch, “Can I try it? When the snow’s gone?”

Mike gave him a “Yeah.”, grin unwavering. The conversation picked up after that, while the Losers ran through what they’d gotten from their parents. Richie got neon green eye contacts. For people who were seemingly baffled by their son, Maggie and Wentworth Tozier always seemed to nail a present for him. Eddie had his suspicions.

At the Losers’ gift exchange, Richie had gotten Beverly a glittery pen set after running her old ones into the ground with making notes at school and drawing on various people’s hands and faces (namely: Eddie). Beverly _also_ got Richie a glittery pen set, because he wouldn’t stop using hers. Eddie got Richie a shirt with Jabba the Hutt on it. In retrospect, it was a lot less sensitive than Richie’s gift to him. Eddie’s gift game wasn’t strong. Most of his gifts this year had been under five dollars. It was the thought that counted, right? 

The gifts that Eddie got from the exchanges usually ended up in drawers and boxes. Although, when they were fifteen, Bill had gifted him a Batman poster, and Eddie, for the first time, hung it up on his wall. He remembered stepping back with his hands on hips, grinning dopily. When Sonia had seen it, she hadn’t mocked it, but there was an “oh, honey… who gave this to you? Don’t you think it clashes?” that made Eddie feel antsy.

Eddie thinks if he’d let himself, his room would be covered in posters and trinkets. Neater than Richie’s, but just as filled with life and laughter.

At some point in their friendship, the Toziers had started to get gifts for Eddie at Christmas. Never Stan or Bill, but Eddie assumed it was because he hung out with Richie the most. When Beverly found her way into Richie’s life, they started to get gifts for her too. At that point, Eddie couldn’t pretend Maggie and Wentworth didn’t know what they were doing. Eddie supposed there was something in Tozier bones that said _I want to teach you about love.  
_

“Did you fill up the roll?” Richie was talking about the camera, which was still hanging around Eddie’s neck. Eddie struggled into an upright sitting position, Beverly’s arm remaining around his shoulders.

“I did..,” said Eddie. His voice trailed off as he zeroed in on Richie’s hand still clasped around his ankle. It curled tightly around it, soft but certain. A feeling wedged itself into Eddie’s throat. He jerked his foot out of Richie’s grasp, fueled by panic and desperation. Richie’s grip loosened, and when Eddie’s gaze finally rose to meet his, his mouth already forming around an apology or something to say that would make it seem like nothing was unusual ( _‘My ankle hurts’_ , _‘Your hand is cold’_ , _‘I need to go to the bathroom’_ ) but Richie was looking at him with such a vexed face that Eddie knew he’d been clocked. _Well, that’s it then, I lost my best friend forever,_ he thought, mournfully. Richie and Eddie were usually draped all over each other, even if they were wrestling, they were never trying to _pull_ apart. That was the status quo, and Eddie had disturbed it. He wanted nothing more than to undo the moment forever. Gingerly, Eddie tucked his leg under himself and curled into Bev’s side. 

“If you didn’t want me to touch you, you could’a said.” Richie mumbled, and the moment was over, because now _Eddie_ was confused. _Why would I ever want that_? Eddie thought wildly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and it came out more sincere than he’d meant. He filled the awkwardness the only way he knew how, with an aimless ramble. “I did fill the- the camera roll. Our beach house was right _on_ the beach, like the beach was our backyard and the seafoam was very pretty. I didn’t get to go out by myself until the last day but when I did it was really nice. There was this, like- this light show? One of the days? Night of Lights? Here, I have the flyer,” he pulled the flyer out of his pocket and tossed it up into Mike’s awaiting hand, “They looked like little stars it was really nice I got a lot of pictures.”

“Holy shit, Eddie,” mumbled Mike from above him. For a moment, Eddie froze, afraid he’d call him out on his behavior, but Mike’s voice rose into excitement instead, “This is cool! You _saw_ this?”

“...Yeah?”

“They put lights on _every_ building? D’you think we could do that with Derry?” Bill asked, flipping through the flyer.

“It’d probably be easier with Derry, because it’s smaller,” said Ben, sounding suspiciously thoughtful.

“That is almost definitely not good for the environment.” Stan said, leaning over the couch.

This was not where Eddie had expected the conversation to go, but he was glad to not be carrying it anymore.

“You know, seafoam is dead mermaids.” Beverly said to Eddie in a private voice.

“More like mermaid come, am I right?" Richie responded, except Beverly had already jumped into the semantics of covering the town of Derry, Maine in string lights. Eddie knew that response was more for him than Beverly, anyway. He was trying to make him laugh. A sort of peace offering. ‘ _I don’t know what I did to upset you but I’m sorry.’_ That was stupid, Eddie thought, because Richie really hadn’t done anything. Richie was too sweet (to Eddie, at least) for his own good. Eddie knew if Richie knew about Eddie’s _thing_ for him he would be a million degrees colder.

Eddie managed a scoff and a strained laugh in response. It was a _little_ funny.

When the conversations died down, Bill scooted off the couch, almost knocking over Eddie’s hot cocoa. He picked up a VHS from the fireplace mantle and lifted it above the Losers’ heads, silently.

“What movie’s it?” Eddie asked, squinting up at the name printed on it.

“ _Jurassic Park._ Mike got ahold of it.” Bill said proudly.

“I just went to Blockbuster Video. It was really easy. I didn't _acquire it illegally_.” Eddie could hear the fluster in Mike’s voice.

“I didn’t say you _stole_ it.” Bill said.

“You implied that I stole it.”

“It would have been cool if you stole it,” added Richie, but Eddie thought that could have been inferred.

They didn’t watch new movies on most Movie Nights, sticking to classics that Mike and Eddie had been so ‘deprived of’ in their childhoods. Tonight was a special occasion. Stan had come up with the idea. He claimed he was tired of shit-quality ancient movies, but Eddie was pretty sure it was because he’d missed him and wanted to celebrate his coming home. The thought made Eddie feel fuzzy and nauseous in his stomach.

For Movie Night to truly begin, the Losers had to rearrange the Hanlons’ entire living room. Their couch and armchair usually faced the fireplace, which flickered warm red and yellow tones onto the Losers when they sat there. It crackled with a homely, inviting energy, and Eddie was not saying he wanted to be burnt by the fire, but he always drew closer to it than anyone else did.

 _Moving on swiftly,_ the Hanlons’ TV and VHS player were set against the east wall, where the fireplace was against the west wall. That meant they had to turn the couch and armchairs all the way around to watch a movie. Without banging their heads on the low shelves hammered into the walls. The living room was the smallest room in the house, cozy for a family of three but rather tight for seven seventeen-year olds. Eddie wasn’t sure how, with the amount of things they’d knocked over or broken in this room (especially during each of their growth spurts), the Hanlons even allowed them in here anymore. The living room was also the only room with books and games and hobby-oriented things, so the shelves were _stacked_. Eddie knew it drove Mike crazy, how tiny this room, how few books, but Eddie love love loved it.

Over the years, they’d perfected their technique for moving the furniture around. Beverly, Eddie, Stan, and Bill would move out of the way, either pressed in a corner of the room, or shuffled into the hallway. Mike, Richie, and Ben would lift the couch and flip it around, and continue with the two armchairs. They each knew the small space like the back of their hands. Bill would sometimes complain that he was stronger than Richie, so why did _Richie_ get to help, but the last time Richie had given up his spot to him, he’d dropped the couch down onto his own foot, and it fucking _broke his foot._ Eddie wasn’t sure what that said about Bill’s couch carrying technique, but Richie clearly had a talent.

Richie positioned himself on the couch’s side now. Eddie thought Bill was saying something, arms crossed over his chest, but Eddie’s mind whited out as Richie gripped the underneath of the couch, sweatshirt sleeves rolled up. Bill was right -- Richie really wasn’t all that strong. But he had grown lean, solid in a way where Eddie could lean back against his chest and it would support him (with the exception of a punched out ‘ _that’s where my organs are, Eds_ ’ from Richie.) He was still knobbly and crooked but also _big, warm, safe, familiar_. Eddie felt like a _dog_. Richie’s muscles (“muscles”) stretched and tensed as they lifted the couch together, and Eddie felt kind of tingly. When the couch was fully turned around, with minimal injury except for Ben stubbing his toe once, Richie dusted off his hands, grinned at Bill, and went “All in a day’s work.” Eddie’s mouth felt dry.

Eddie tore his eyes away to see Beverly giving him a curious look as she sipped from her hot cocoa. Her eyebrows were furrowed like she was worried. It wasn’t like she didn’t have reason to be, because personally, Eddie was having a fucking crisis. That was the thing about Richie: he wasn’t particularly strong or like, ripped, or anything that Eddie thought being attracted to men was supposed to be like, but he was witty and smart and _boyish_. Which was not what Eddie was prepared for, when it came to the whole queer thing. He didn’t expect it to feel so nice, and he didn’t think it would ever feel so familiar and safe. It just felt like love. _Oh,_ _fuck_ that _mushy bullshit,_ Eddie thought, but he couldn’t find anyone to be angry at except himself.

Minutes later, he found himself with his shoulder pressed against Richie’s, thinking _this is certainly Hell and I’m being punished._ The seven of them didn’t all fit on the couch together anymore, even if they stacked on top of each other. It was a tight fit even with just Richie, Eddie, Bill, Mike, and Stan, but no one wanted to be on the floor. Ben and Beverly staked their claim on the armchair. Mike dragged out a big, warm blanket for the five of them to share, and Eddie found it suffocating. He could feel every edge and joint on his left side knocking against Richie’s. He could tell Richie was trying to exercise some sort of self-control, respecting Eddie’s boundaries, but godfuck was it awkward as hell. Eddie wanted to drape himself over Richie’s side and curl up until his legs were on his lap but there was a voice in his head going _you can’t you can’t you can’t_ . Bill, Mike, and Stan, had certainly noticed too, and he could feel Mike sending him worried looks from where he was curled into Bill’s side, one leg hanging over the side of the couch. So much for flying under the radar; an hour into movie night and Beverly, Mike, and Richie _himself_ were all probably planning to talk to him about it. What the _fuck_!

Stan kicked him in the stomach.

“What the _fuck_!” Eddie repeated, audibly this time.

“I’m glad you’re home, I missed you.” Stan’s tone was softer than his actions, “Please pay attention to this movie that Mike stole to support you.”

Eddie rubbed his side, “Love _you_ too, Stan.”

“I didn’t steal it.” Mike mumbled.

“We know you didn’t. You’d have to be cool for that.” Richie said, for the first time since the movie started. There was more tension in his voice than usual, and Eddie wondered what the fuck was up with Richie today.

“None of us are _cool_ , that’s our _thing_.” Mike responded.

“Just sayin’.” Richie shrugged, which confounded Eddie. There was a sharp _“shh!”_ from the armchair before Eddie could jump on him, though, so he simply sat back and tried to focus and relax. This should be the one place he could do that, in a room filled with people who loved him. So he let himself melt into the familiar warmth while he watched Jeff Goldblum deliver the line _“you did it, you crazy son of a bitch, you did it”_ and felt at once satisfied and deeply _un_ satisfied.

+++

Eddie twiddled the phone cord between his thumb and pointer finger, rolling it restlessly. With his other hand, he was tapping out his own home number on the number pad. He chewed on his lip when the phone started ringing. This routine was as familiar as ever -- movie nights often morphed into sleepovers. This night was shaping up to one of those, because after they’d finished Jurassic Park (which was a fantastic fucking movie, by the way, Eddie still had goosebumps and it was his second time seeing it), they’d all still been vibrating with energy. Eddie had been about to raid the kitchen for snacks when he remembered that he needed to call his mother. He wasn’t anxious that she would say no, because it was 8 P.M. in the middle of winter. Eddie was not getting home any time soon. He was more so bone-tired of the incoming passive aggressive comments towards his friends.

There was a fuzzy click on the other side of the line. “Jessica Hanlon?” His mother asked, even though Eddie couldn’t fathom a single reason why Jessica Hanlon would ever call his mother; it had always been Eddie or Mike from this number.

“No, Ma, it’s me,” he said, and he almost got whiplash from how quick he switched from _Sonia_ to _Ma_ in his inner monologue. He could feel himself slipping away from himself, and it was surreal as always but the _Eddie_ that Ma knew was just that far removed from the Eddie he was with the Losers. 

The rest of the conversation was indistinct in his memory, just Ma’s voice mixing with the dominating forces of the Losers’ voices from the kitchen. Eddie caught something about “I could have rung up your cousins if you wanted some company--” and “I thought we bonded over our trip--” and felt vaguely guilty. Sometimes, he just couldn’t parse the mix of words she said that felt genuinely sweet and the words that his mind would twist and repeat. She wasn’t a bad person. Eddie just suspected sometimes parenting wasn’t her strong suit. He knew she didn’t hate him, just had a tunnel vision for what she thought was best for Eddie. 

When they hung up, he glared up at the mustard-yellow telephone for a few more seconds.

“Eds, can you pick a lock-- oh, shit, what did that phone do to you?” Richie rounded the bend of the hallway, as fucking bewildering as ever. 

“Can I _pick a lock_?” Eddie asked. 

“We found a secret locked cabinet in the kitchen.” Richie said, normally, like a normal person does. 

Eddie let out a hysterical giggle. It was just like, fucking-- he’d had five fucking emotional crises in a day, and the Losers remained unchanged. He wanted them to stay that way forever. He _needed_ them to stay that way forever, and he understood, in a moment, that he didn’t want to talk about his feelings. The wrench that would throw into their dynamic was too much to risk, and Eddie was already hanging onto this as hard as he could. 

Richie was looking at him strangely, but Eddie’s shoulders just shook in a silent laugh. 

They didn't end up opening the locked cabinet, because Eddie was better at picking door locks. Beverly knew how to pick this kind of lock, he was sure, but she just shoved a marshmallow into her mouth and said, muffled, “You are all so stupid.” when asked. 

The bounty they did get from the kitchen raid was entirely sweets. Marshmallows, candy, fruit roll-ups, you name it. Some would say the Hanlons were fools for having so many sweets in their home, but Eddie thought if they didn’t the Losers would have just eaten all their other food. Like a pack of wolves; you had to set aside certain foods to feed them so that they didn’t kill you, or something. It wasn’t a perfect metaphor. 

“We are going to get _fucked up!_ ” Richie hollered in the living room. 

Stan glanced towards the ceiling, “Mike’s parents don’t get paid enough for this shit.” 

“ _I_ don’t get paid enough for this shit.” Eddie mumbled. 

Beverly offered him a marshmallow for his troubles, and he took it gratefully. Ben had been raiding the closet while they were raiding the kitchen, and came out with two sleeping bags, dropping them at the living room’s doorway.

“Okay, who’s sleeping down here?” He asked, dusting his hands off.

Bill, who was already lying facedown on the floor, raised a hand. After a beat, Richie shrugged and also raised a hand, “I can sleep on the couch.” 

“I’m gonna go home soon, actually.” Stan said, which was met with heckles and booing. Eddie in particular, who was sitting between Stan’s legs eating a fruit roll-up and slobbering all over his hands (there’s no non-sloppy way to eat one of those), gave him a betrayed glare. 

“What? I want to sleep in my own home!” Stan responded.

Eddie supposed that was fair. There would be more space, anyway. Still, he leaned back against him, effectively pinning him in place. “Not if I have anything to do about it,” he grumbled. 

Stan laughed and lifted his bag of candy into Eddie’s lap, arms wrapping around his torso.

Eddie thought this should feel weirder, especially since now he was, you know. But, on some level, he also knew Stan was really, truly, _only_ his best friend. Physical affection had always been the way the six of them expressed their affection to him, with soft hugs and kisses. It started with Richie (as so many things did), who was a naturally touchy person, and developed into a sort of language over time. It made Eddie feel safe. 

Ben and Eddie would sleep in Mike’s room and Beverly would be in the guest room, which sucked, because Eddie had the best 2 A.M. conversations with her. Not that Mike’s patented Late Night Musings weren’t enlightening, but there was only so much he could handle hearing before it felt like a weird Philosophy-History class. 

Eddie ended up lying on the ground next to Bill when Stan up and left (the traitor). Bill had slung an arm over Eddie’s chest, and pressed his head into his hair. Eddie’s hands were sticky with various candy fluids, and there was a pile of candies (including but not limited to! _Airheads, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers, lollipops_ \-- the good stuff) stacked up next to their place on the floor. Bill wasn’t eating any candy (the coward), but that meant more for Eddie, anyway. 

“Got enough candy?” Richie joked, leaning over him. When Eddie didn’t respond, he sat down next to him, legs crossed. “This is quite the stash,” he said, sifting through the pile. 

“That’s mine.” Eddie warned through a Jolly Rancher. 

“Pretty sure you stole some from me, actually,” he said, picking up a Push Pop. “Jesus Christ, Eds, you’re not going to eat all of this, are you?” 

“I’m getting _fucked up_!”

“ _Clearly_.” Richie pushed through more of the pile, “I mean, all the power to ya, but..”

“I’ve had a bad week,” mumbled Eddie. 

Richie turned back to him with a softer expression than the buck-toothed grin he’d approached with. “Haven’t we all?” He asked, and Eddie felt like exclaiming ‘ _No!_ You haven’t!” but Richie reached over to pat his thigh. He touched base for a fraction of a second, then jerked his hand away like he’d been burnt. They were silent for a beat. Eddie picked up an Airhead and ripped it open, pointedly not thinking about Richie, and pointedly ignoring the churning in his stomach. He’d been nauseous since the night began.

Before long, Richie wandered over to Bev, like always, and Eddie sorely missed the warm beam of attention on him. Even if it was awkward attention. And he missed Richie’s casual, comforting touches-- the rest of the Losers were fluent in the language, but he and Richie were native speakers. 

Eddie listened in on their conversation. Look, he didn’t mean to. There were six people crammed into a tiny room. Everyone could hear everything everyone else was saying. And there was no need for privacy. The Losers knew everything about each other.

Well. 

The Losers knew most things about each other. 

“--do you think you’ll be married by 30?” Richie was asking. His voice sounded off, like he was doing an impression of himself. 

“Thirty is pretty early. My mom was fourty-six when they got married,” said Beverly. It was weird to hear her talk about her mother, because she hadn’t had one for the first thirteen years of her life, but Mrs. Partridge (yes, like the bird), her adopted mother, was the sweetest woman in the world, and Eddie thought she deserved to have that. Eddie imagined getting adopted sometimes, but he was seventeen and no couple wanted an almost-legal adult man as a child. _If_ , though, he imagined his father would be like Mr. Hanlon. Mr. Hanlon was the model father in Eddie’s eyes-- comforting, strong, dad-joke-telling, newspaper-reading. He was envious. 

“Yeah, yeah, but if you and Benny aren’t married by thirty, I’ll eat my hat.” Richie said.

“We’ve gone on.. two dates, Richie.” Bev said, stealing a glance at Ben, who was talking to Mike. Beverly Marsh was a woman who knew what she wanted, but she treated this quaint romance like a fragile thing. She didn’t know how to navigate it. Eddie kind of got it; she was used to all the pain and none of the love, and she was not cut out for romantic romance. Eddie was sure they’d figure it out anyway. They already were well on their way. Eddie was envious of that, too. 

“So? You’ve been in like, _love_ , since you were fifteen.” Eddie ripped open a Skittles bag. 

“Well, I… can only hope. I mean, it’s possible.” Eddie propped himself up, so as to not choke on the Skittles as he poured them into his mouth.

“Yeah,” and Richie got quiet. Eddie was starting to feel a sugar rush coming on when he said, “We’re both fuckin’ lonely, huh?” 

“Cheers to that.” Bev raised her lollipop into the air. 

Richie huffed a laugh to a joke he hadn’t fully delivered yet. “Hey, Bev. If we’re not both married by thirty, wanna get married?” 

Eddie felt something get stuck in his throat, and he gagged, silently on the ground. 

Bev laughed too, “Yeah, sure, Rich. If we’re both still lonely fucks in the year two-thousand-four, I’ll hit you up.” 

And the thought sent something off under his skin, and he thought he could feel his flesh splitting for the bugs to burrow. He scratched angrily at his arms, making them red like a rash or a _burn_ . Eddie scrambled to his feet, his blood running hot and cold all at once. Bill’s arm slipped off his lap and landed on the floor with a solid _thunk._ Four sets of worried eyes turned to him, and he couldn’t handle the heat of their gazes. 

“Eddie, you okay?” Beverly asked. 

“Too much candy?” Richie asked, knowingly, even though he really didn’t know the fucking half of it. 

“No, I’m fine, I’m really--,” his stomach lurched, “I’m doing really fine it’s a sugar rush, I, it’s good it’s been a weird week, I’m fucking _peachy_ \--” 

Two minutes later, Eddie Kaspbrak sat, knees to the splintered ground of the Hanlons’ bathroom, head bent over the toilet. He imagined he and Beverly looked like some sort of tragic painting in the snot-green lighting, both staring at the rainbow (Fucking _ha_ -ha.) of half-digested candy floating in the murky toilet water. Bev’s hands stroked through his hair gently, and his vision swam. The worst of it was over, he sussed out, although he didn’t truly connect yet that that was _his_ vomit, just that someone had been sick in here. Some of it dripped down his chin. _What a shame_ , he thought in a church-lady voice, He felt very sorry for whoever this had happened to. 

“Are you better, baby?” Bev asked. 

“I don’t like--” Eddie’s voice was cracked and raw, “I don’t like nicknames.” 

For some reason, he could see her face fill with relief out of the corner of his eye, all the lines in her face relaxing. She stood up, patting him on the head ( _Me too, boy, me too_ ) as she ripped a paper towel from a roll and ran it under the tap. She returned to wipe vomit off his chin and neck, and oh, his shirt and jeans. Eddie was sobering now, coming out of the surreal haze. 

“Oh, shit!” He startled while Bev was throwing the paper towel out. “Did I vomit?” 

Beverly looked at him strangely. “Yeah, Eddie.” 

“Oh.” Huh. “Can a sugar rush knock you out?” 

“I really don’t think so, but you _were_ going pretty fuckin’ hard on the Skittles.”

“Those little rainbow bitches,” Eddie muttered. He had a sick feeling it wasn’t just the Skittles, though.

Beverly let out a shocked laugh, before offering a hand to pull him up. Eddie struggled up, on wobbly deer-like legs. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands. 

“Um.. did the others.. Do they know?” Eddie didn’t think he could face them if they did. 

“Can’t see a way they don’t. You’re gonna need a new shirt, anyway,” she pointed out. 

The first image in his head was Mike, mustard-yellow phone held up to his ear, saying “Yeah, Mrs. Kaspbrak, I think you should take him home,” and Eddie must have paled again, because Bev was at his side again in an instant, pulling him down by the arm until they were sitting again. 

“No _, no,_ **_no_ ** _!_ ” He said desperately, “You have to tell them they can’t call my mom.” 

Beverly’s gaze was understanding, and Eddie felt transparent. “They’re not going to. None of us would do that.”

Eddie leaned back against the wall and stared straight ahead, at the sink’s leg. Its paint was peeling and chipped. This was not a pretty place to be having a breakdown. It was the visual opposite to St. Augustine, a whole length of a country away, but here he was, with the same problems in the same body, burying his face in his hands again. 

“What’s up?” Bev asked after a moment of watching his shoulders shake. He wasn’t crying, just breathing with his entire body like it was the last thing he would do. She settled against the wall, too, her body facing his in an oddly protective manner, like she was trying to defend him from something, but there was nothing to defend him from because no one was hurting him. 

“I think I’m sick,” he blurted out. That wasn’t what he meant to say, but it came out anyway. 

Bev didn’t know what to say to that, so he barrelled forward, determined to say _something_ to _someone_ about _anything_. 

“I _vomited_ , and- and, I blacked out, except it was like I was out of my body, holy shit, I caught a disease in Florida,” and he was hating every word that came out of his mouth because it wasn’t what he meant or what he _really wanted to tell her_. 

“No, you didn’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “That.. happens to me too,” she was picking her nails, following his gaze to the fragmented paint of the sink. “It feels like.. being in the Deadlights again.” 

They didn’t talk about It. Sometimes it felt like he was still there, an unwanted eighth member of their group, a grandiose blood red clown at their lunch table. It left a gap between certain topics, like the way none of them could talk about what they were scared about. They’d gotten better at bridging that gap. The most effective way to talk about It was to pretend It hadn’t happened at all. 

Despite this, Bev continued, “Like I’m watching myself, or, or… floating. I don’t think it means you’re sick.”

Eddie shook his head, “No, you don’t get it! You almost died, that makes sense for you, you _lost_ something.” He turned his wide eyes up at her. 

“Why are you trying so hard to convince me there’s something wrong with you?” Bev asked, softly, “Because you _won’t._ ”

Eddie didn’t respond to that.

“You don’t think you lost anything?” She asked, voice even more quiet. “Eddie, you found out your mother was giving you _fake_ pills. That’s a lot. We all lost a lot. You don’t go through something like that and just go back to normal. We’re all coping.” 

Her hand found his knee and started to rub circles into it, and Eddie felt so small. 

“There _is_ something wrong with me,” he said, finally. He turned his head so that they were making direct eye contact, almost nose-to-nose, and he thought about how easy it would be to kiss her, but that would be inappropriate, especially considering what he was about to say. The worlds crawled up his dry throat. “ _Beverly._ I’m gay.”

Her hand stopped rubbing circles.

He hadn’t even gotten to that yet, in all his inner monologues about Richie. He’d never once thought the word _gay_ , because he hadn’t even fully gotten around to accepting that he liked one boy, much less.. boys exclusively. It didn’t feel good to say. It felt incriminating, like he shouldn’t be saying it at all. Like it had been forcefully yanked from the depths of his subconscious. It was true, though, he supposed. An Objective Fact. It had always been true. Fuck.

“And that’s why you think you’re _sick?_ ”

And Eddie hadn’t fully parsed _that_ , either. But being gay and being sick were intrinsically tied in his mind, to the point where he wasn’t sure why they needed to discuss it. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

Beverly’s tired eyes searched his, and he thought they were so close right now she could probably see everything that went through them. She searched for some trace of a lie, but she wouldn’t find one. Eddie Kaspbrak was nothing if not honest. 

She raised her hand to his forehead and combed through his hair. The touch made him feel a little more sane.

“You’re not sick, I think,” and she was saying _I think_ a lot, like she truly didn’t know, and Eddie thought she really might not but he wanted to believe her, “ _Healing_. But not sick. You never were. Just hurt.” 

She waited longer to say, “You gotta stop thinking you can do this stuff on your own.”

And Eddie had no fucking clue what _that_ shit meant, but something told him he should spray paint it on the bathroom wall so he’d never forget it. 

“I love you,” he said, honestly. He thought about angry waves on their back porch on St. Augustine; he loved her that fiercely.

Beverly was the first one to break eye contact, and she had to pull herself downwards to rest her head on his shoulder. She kissed him on the side of his neck on her way down, which tickled. She didn’t say _I love you too_ , but as Eddie is re-washing his hands from clutching the grimy bathroom tiles and she waits by the door, he thinks she meant to. 

They left the bathroom, and Eddie hopped his way up the stairs in an every-other-step manner, hoping to uneventfully raid Mike’s wardrobe. The top floor was where he entered a minefield, not wanting to wake Mr. or Mrs. Hanlon. They were probably awake already, wondering what the hell their son’s strange friends were doing downstairs, but Eddie wanted to respect their rest. As he stepped carefully through the hallway, he heard Bill ask, through remarkably thin walls, “Hey, where’s Eddie?” and he cringed. 

It reminded him of the mechanic of Pac-Man, narrowly avoiding alerting people at every turn, while Richie screeched in his ear. Metaphorically. 

Eddie always left a pair of pants at Mike’s house, because more often than not, he forgot to bring them of his own accord. He knew they were in a closet (haha) somewhere, but once he found the closet, he couldn’t find the pants. He bent backwards to see higher, and there they were, folded neatly on a shelf near the ceiling. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, because simple mathematics said he was not going to reach that. He also was not going to stew in his own goddamn _vomit_ for any longer. He rubbed his temples. 

Eddie glanced down both ends of the hallway before proceeding to make a fool of himself, standing on his toes to grapple blindly at the shelf. Curse Mrs. Hanlon and her organization skills. When that didn’t work, he gritted his teeth and sifted through the contents of the closet for some sort of long, hooked stick to pull them down. 

And that’s where Richie found him, halfway submerged in a closet (FUCKING _HA_ -HA), clothes spotted with dried vomit. 

“I….” Richie seemed almost lost for words. 

Eddie liked to have control over the _one thing_ in his life. And that was the way he presented himself to the world, generally put-together or at least cohesive, like a graphic t-shirt and jeans. The Losers had seen him at so much worse than this (most notably: bloodied after crawling out a sewer with a broken arm) but he liked that he could control it. This was not how he ever wanted anyone to see him. 

Essentially, the conflict here was his pride VS. his pride, where, in many ways, he was too stubborn to ask for help, but if he didn’t he’d probably have to encounter a third human being looking like _this_. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, “Richie, can you see those pants on the top shelf?”

“The plaid ones? Yeah.” 

“Can you get those down for me?” Eddie’s voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and Richie looked delighted about it. 

Richie did get them down, with little to _no_ effort. “Next time we’ll just hide the candy on the top shelf and we’ll avoid this situation entirely,” he said, handing the pants to Eddie. 

Eddie had been unintentionally (and intentionally) avoiding Richie the whole night, to the point where he’d almost forgotten how much he liked him. News flash: it was to a _devastating_ effect. “It won’t happen again. I don’t think I can ever look a Skittle in the eyes again,” he said, barely concealing his giddiness at being able to be normal with Richie. 

“You little monster.” Richie said, fondly. He raised his hand up like he was going to ruffle Eddie’s hair or shove him affectionately, but the movement changed halfway through, and it became an awkward wave before Richie fucking _bolted_ down the stairs. 

Eddie stole one of Mike’s t-shirts from his bedroom, and retreated into the upstairs bathroom to change. The pants were wool, which felt slightly inappropriate, considering the animals sleeping right outside the farmhouse. The shirt said _Scooby Doo!_ , which was very typical Mike Hanlon, like a flashlight under his chin and mystery books stacked on his shelves. Eddie kind of didn’t get it, because they’d lived through a real life horror movie. But on the other hand, Scooby Doo was fun as hell and scary stories still gave him goosebumps, despite everything. 

He washed his face and brushed his teeth with a spare toothbrush. The toothpaste and water washed away any vomit-taste left in his mouth, and he exited the bathroom like a new man. A man who hadn’t splurged on candies so fuckin’ hard he threw up. 

The rest of the Losers seemed to agree that the partying (“partying”) had come to an end, at the subversive time of ( _drumroll_ ) 11 P.M. Eddie could hear the sounds of them in the kitchen, putting away candy and hot cocoa mugs. That’s why he shrieked, when he turned the corner and saw Mike putting out the sleeping bag. 

“What?!” Mike yelled back, spinning around quickly. Mr. and Mrs. Hanlon were definitely awake by now. 

Eddie doubled over, hand on his chest, “Jesus Christ. You weren’t there ten minutes ago.”

“No shit!” Mike exclaimed. Eddie laughed breathlessly and made his way over to the bed, where he lied face-down and breathed in the scent of a farmhouse home, which, aside from the lingering sweet cocoa smell, was _warm_ in every good way. 

Before long, Mike lied down beside him. Neither of them were under the blanket, just lying side by side. Eddie turned his head to his left to look at Mike. He was lying on his back, face and bright eyes illuminated by the bedroom lights. 

Mike was the one person Eddie could think of, out of all the Losers, that didn’t seem fundamentally _changed_ by the clown. There wasn’t a way he couldn’t be, Eddie knew logically, but Mike seemed always so prepared, so tough-skinned. Mike was second prepared only to Eddie himself (Eddie had a flash of an image in his mind then, of himself and Mike, age thirteen and side by side much like they were now, except in front of Neibolt house. Eddie’s waist was slung with a fanny pack and Mike’s chest with bullets, and they really felt like they could take on the world). 

Mike had traded his fair amount of insecurities with Eddie, and Eddie knew he wasn’t perfect, but he was certainly not someone who would end up in any of the situations Eddie landed himself in.

Mike turned his own face to the right, and they were suddenly face to face. His brows were furrowed when he asked, “Should you be lying on your stomach after you just… blew chunks?” 

Eddie grimaced. “You can just say vomited.” He probably shouldn’t have been lying on his stomach, in any case, so he flipped himself over. They both stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment. The Hanlons’ ceilings were smooth, not popcorned and dotty like Eddie’s back home. Eddie liked to connect the dots, liked to imagine they were stars and constellations. When Richie would force his crooked limbs through the small, inconvenient window, they would lie on Eddie’s bed and pretend they were stargazing. They could easily go real stargazing, and they had, a few times, but most nights Eddie was too tired to move, held tight and immobile by a stress that set in over the day. Bone-tired, he liked to say, because that was really what it felt like, like his worries had settled into his bones and weighed him down. Richie didn’t mind, content to try to fit the entire world through the truly, _miniscule_ window. 

Mike’s room was not as blank as Eddie’s, but not as cluttered as Richie’s. It was perfectly Mike, with bookshelves filled and sentimental heirlooms in the places where books weren’t. It was clear to see Mike’s brightness in the books he had, because all the covers were mysterious or colorful and filled with a certain character. That was what everyone else’s rooms had that Eddie’s didn’t. Character, a liveliness. Their homes and Derry as a whole may not have been very loving, but each Loser harbored pieces of themselves in their rooms; they didn’t let themselves be stripped away. 

“Are you doing better?” Mike asked, arms folded contentedly across his chest. 

Eddie resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands again, “I’m not about to vomit at any given moment anymore.” 

“That’s progress,” said Mike with a little smile, “How are you doing, though? Like, mentally.” 

And, _boy_ , wasn’t that the question of the century?

Eddie’s first instinct was to say he was completely and utterly okay, but he had a feeling they both knew that wasn’t true. He settled on, “I’m… weird,” and then he added, “I get why you want to go to Florida so bad now.” 

“Really? ‘Thought you had a bad time.”

“No, not really. It sucked, but St. Augustine was like nothing you’ve ever seen.” 

“I haven’t seen much, Eddie, I live in Derry.” 

And they both laughed, but it was true. Eddie had whiplash from the going back and forth, and it _had_ been a slow ease into Florida and a slow ease back into Maine, but they hadn’t really stopped anywhere else on their road trip. The contrast was palpable in the air. St. Augustine was packed with an entire city’s worth of love, no unfilled pockets. Where Derry was somewhat desolate, St. Augustine was bursting. St. Augustine felt like a home inherently. 

Someone had put the work into making St. Augustine a home like that, the same way the Losers worked to make Derry one. But St. Augustine was so old and weathered that the love and the homeliness had sunk into its very bones already and nothing could shake it out. 

He breathed in deep, and then out and then in again. “I’m so tired, Mike,” he said, like it was a revelation. The Losers were still rowdy downstairs, but he felt that bone-deep tiredness making its way. 

Mike reached over and patted his hand, “Go to sleep, then.”

“Not that kind of tired,” he said quickly, and realised in a moment he was about to do this all over again. 

“What do you mean?” Mike asked, as serene as ever.

“Like,” he scrunched his eyes up in effort to put the feeling into words, “I just feel like this.. _Loss_.” And Eddie didn’t think he’d ever be able to talk about this and not bring up loss or sickness or death. 

Mike looked curious, “What do you think you’ve lost?” 

“I.. I, don’t know?” And it was easier to put into words for Beverly, who commanded the room and seemed to know immediately what he was talking about. “I just, _fuck_ , that summer, Bill and Beverly and everyone lost so much. And I… did, too.” 

“Yeah. You did.” Mike said matter-of-factly, and Eddie’s throat tightened and twisted. 

There was no way to package it nicely, he realised. “I’m just too tired of keeping things inside of myself,” and then he spluttered until he spit out, “I’m, fucking, I’m gay.” 

Mike turned his kind eyes onto him, and they held hands until Eddie stopped hyperventilating. 

“You don’t think that’s weird?” Eddie asked, lifting their intertwined hands up. The thought that the Losers would retract their grounding touches once they found out terrified him. He couldn’t afford that. He only had _so much_. 

“No. We’ve always been like this,” said Mike, simply. 

And Eddie smiled a watery smile. He couldn’t look at Mike too long, felt as if he might be blinded, so he turned his gaze back up to the lights soon enough. “I feel like.. I’m never going to come to terms with it,” he said quietly. And it’s true, because it feels like damnation, the word _gay_. 

“I think… it might be a little bit like the stages of grief.” Mike said, after a beat of silence. “For you, at least. I don’t know that you’ve really… _processed_.. anything.” And Mike was trying to make it sound as nice as possible, but it cut through Eddie’s chest. And that’s exactly what the tiredness and the nausea and the out-of-body experiences felt like, like there was something weighing on him, unprocessed, untamed. 

Eddie _sobbed_. It was a broken, choked noise like it was forced out of him. Eddie realised in an instant he couldn’t remember the last time he cried, and he didn’t think he could stop it this time, anyway, because then he was crying and babbling incoherently into Mike’s chest. It seeped out of him like something he’d been carrying far too long. When he was done all he felt was really, truly, tired, for the first time in a long time. 

He crawled under the covers, and Ben found his way into the sleeping bag. It was past midnight, then, when Bill stopped by their doorway. 

And Eddie didn’t mean to eavesdrop again, but the words still filtered through his half asleep-haze.

“Hey, Muh-Mike,” said Bill, softly, with an attention Eddie had never noticed him carrying. 

“Oh, Hi. Bill,” said Mike. 

“Can I borrow a book?” 

“Mi… book, es su.. book.” 

“I can’t believe the great Mike Hanlon doesn’t know Spanish,” said Bill, chuckling. 

“Shut up. You say an Italian word _once_.” 

When Bill left, Mike looked down at his hands and twiddled his fingers against the thick comforter. He looked deep in thought, uncertain, and younger and less prepared for anything than Eddie had ever really seen him look.

and…

Oh. 

_Oh._

Mike Hanlon carried the same burden he did. 

Eddie was too shocked to close his eyes in time when Mike turned back to lie down, and they both shrieked in unison when they made eye contact. 

“Shut _up_!” Yelled a distinctly Richie voice from downstairs. 

“So… being in love with our best friends, huh?” Eddie said, shakily. 

“Can we _please_ never talk about that interaction ever again?” Mike pleaded. 

Eddie, in a Richie-move, saluted him like a captain. 

They lay in bed next to each other for a while longer, silent.

“Hey, Eddie?” Mike whispered finally. 

“What?” He whispered back. 

“Do you ever think about how every brick you’ve ever seen has been touched by a human hand?” 

Eddie scrunched his nose up, mouth agape. Then he promptly turned onto his stomach. “Good _night_ , Mikey,” he said into his pillow. 

“Goodnight, Eddie,” said Mike in return, smile evident. 

+++

Eddie’s first thought when he woke up two days later was _I wish I was in Richie Tozier’s arms right now_. Which sucked, because Richie Tozier was ignoring him. Okay, that wasn’t Richie’s fault, it was Eddie’s fault, because Eddie had pushed him away. And no one was really ignoring anyone, there was just a… rift. The air was stiff between them when they were left in a room alone. 

Eddie had never realised how much of their relationship was built on a _touch_ language, something only the two of them could communicate in. At the same time, every time Richie came close, Eddie jumped. He both craved comfort from him and was deathly afraid of it, and he wasn’t sure how to unlearn it. 

It was Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of December, and Eddie was going out with Richie that afternoon. They always did a few days after Christmas, with sales and all that, but this year they were also picking up the developed pictures from Eddie’s camera, from the camera shop. Richie had stopped by and delivered the film a day earlier. The camera shop was a mom & pop where they hardly got traffic, and Richie was familiar enough with them to know that they’d probably have it done in a few hours. Eddie wasn’t too sure about that, but then again, he’d only owned a camera for a week. 

Eddie brushed his teeth and arranged breakfast for himself. His mother sat on the armchair outside the kitchen, her own frozen waffles in her lap. Eddie’s breakfast was a ham slice and a cut tomato; consistently reliable. Eddie sat at the dining table alone and poked at his food until it was gone. 

He washed up and felt fresh as he went upstairs to change into a sweater and jeans; consistently reliable. These were the times of day Eddie felt most sane. Nothing had gone wrong yet, and everything was to Eddie’s own schedule and liking. 

“I’m going to the Toziers’, Ma,” he told her downstairs. 

Sonia made a distasteful noise, “When will you be back?”

“Before dinner,” he said. 

“Six P.M. and no later.” 

Eddie zipped up his coat, and felt in quite a good mood despite it all. He dislodged his bike from the side of the house and cleaned the overnight snow off of it. The bike ride to the Toziers’ was a revelation, because while Derry in the snow after sunset was certainly a sight, before sunset was when it truly glittered. 

The Toziers lived in a better neighborhood than the Kaspbraks, picturesque suburban home and all, and Eddie always felt intimidated to ride up to it. But it had become maybe more familiar than his own home over the years, and today he felt more excited than dreading. 

He pressed the doorbell with a single gloved finger. 

One Maggie Tozier appeared in the doorway, awake brighter and earlier than certain kin of hers. “Oh, Eddie! Look at your red little nose, you must be _freezing_ , come in,” she said, all in a single breath. She talked as much as certain kin of hers. 

Eddie bowed his head, smiling as he walked through the door. He shook his boots on the rug in the doorway as she closed the door, leaving it unlocked. When he unraveled his scarves and stripped his gloves, his nose and hands _were_ freezing. 

“ _Richie! Eddie’s here!_ ” Maggie called up the stairs, but she knew as well as Eddie knew that he wasn’t going to come down. Eddie was already kicking off his shoes and coat to run up the stairs and burst into Richie’s room. 

Eddie felt bad for Wentworth, who was presumably still asleep, because he was already causing a racket in the home he didn’t even live in. But his remorse vanished when Richie squealed - squealed _is_ the right word - and shot straight up in bed. 

Eddie fist pumped. “I am unrivaled!” He exclaimed. 

That startled Richie into chortle, and Eddie joined. “I’ve taught you well, my son,” he managed through laughs, gesturing grandly, as if that was something that a wise old man would do. 

When Eddie stopped laughing, he managed to take a real breath in and look at Richie. His clothes were ruffled and the bedsheets crinkled around him, diving inwards where he sat. His eyes were crinkled, too, in the middle of a silent, private laugh still. They were vaguely focused on Eddie, but Eddie knew he couldn’t really see him, just the shape of him. Richie had spent a lot of time detailing his blindness to Eddie. His hair was fluffed and effortlessly curled around his face. 

“You squeal like a _rat,_ and you look like one too.” Eddie said. “A mole rat, with little squinty eyes and all.” 

“I don’t think mole rats are technically actual rats.” Richie responded, grin splitting his face. 

“Why do you _know_ that?” Eddie asked. Richie didn’t respond, just slung his legs over the side of his bed and stretched. He scratched his side as he stood to his full height and walked across the room, like Eddie wasn’t there. 

And this was where Eddie got lost. Status quo for Richie and Eddie pre-St. Augustine was that they were casually intimate, like lounging on each other’s beds with their legs intertwined, locking at the knees. It was no big deal to change in front of each other or pee and talk to the person outside of the bathroom (look, Eddie didn’t say it was a normal amount of intimacy, but they’d never been exactly _normal_ ). Now, though, Eddie felt almost like he was cheating to get to be there, to get to witness Richie changing. Like he didn’t deserve to, like he didn’t deserve Richie’s trust anymore. 

He squeezed his eyes shut quickly as Richie tugged at the bottom of his t-shirt. “Uh- should I go?” He asked. 

“Uhm.” Richie sounded confused, “If you want to, dude. I’m not stopping ya.” 

_Dude._ Not Eds or any obscure variation. Eddie thought he could feel his heart break a little. He exited the premises. 

Eddie kicked it with Mrs. Tozier while Richie changed, leaning against their kitchen island and watching in awe as she chopped tomatoes. She did it much more cleanly than Eddie had taught himself to, into clunky, mismatched bits. Hers were little diced cubes. She poured them into a sizzling pan. 

“Omelette,” she said, in response to a question Eddie hadn’t asked. “Pretty much the only breakfast I know how to make, but boy am I famous for it.” 

“I know, Mrs. Tozier,” he said, amusedly, because Maggie still treated him sometimes like he was new to the household.

Maggie smiled to herself. “I know that you know. How was your vacation? It was odd not seeing you ‘round here.” 

“My vacation was nice. We’re going to pick up the pictures now, actually.” 

“Lovely, that’s lovely,” she said. 

“Who’s this young man?” Asked a booming voice from the stairwell. That was the way Mr. Tozier had been introducing himself to Eddie since he turned seventeen. In his defense, it _was_ fucking funny. 

Wentworth clasped his shoulder with a hand. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, boy. Richie is insufferable without you.” (Maggie chuckled from the stove)

“I would have thought you guys would like your family time.” Eddie commented. 

“We did, we did, it was lovely. Wentworth is kidding.” Maggie said. 

“Ah, you’re just as much family as anyone else.” Wentworth said, pulling a mug out of a cabinet. 

Richie skidded into the conjoined kitchen-dining-living room soon enough after that, wearing a sweater patterned with teeth and a green raincoat. The sleeves of the sweater poked out underneath the sleeves of the jacket. He was wearing glasses now.

“Nice sweater, son,” said Wentworth. 

“Nice mug, dad,” said Richie. Eddie’s eyes flitted back to Wentworth’s mug, filled with coffee now. It was painted with the word DAD-MAN, and Eddie knew Richie had made that for Wentworth, many moons ago, and Eddie felt fleetingly jealous that he didn’t get to do that with his dad. And then he snorted. 

Richie sat at the island and ate Maggie’s omelette gratefully, alongside Maggie herself, who poured herself tea and ate an omelette with many less toppings. The three Toziers hovered in that cozy space together, and Eddie was aware of a familial love that he was intruding on. They were pulled together, and none of them were trying to leave. 

“So, Eds--” Richie started, his mouth still full of egg, but Eddie gagged at the sight. “Jesus. You can’t do that anymore, because now I’m worried you’ll actually blow chunks at any moment.” 

“Don’t talk with your _mouth full_ , then.” 

Richie acted dutifully, and it was another few moments before he spoke again. “Okay, so, _Eds_ , do you notice anything different about me?” 

Eddie searched his face and spotted it instantly. “Yeah, you look like a lizard.”

“It’s cool, right? I could change my identity and run away and no one would suspect a thing.” 

“No… no, you couldn’t. You look like you with neon green eyes.”

Richie had put in and taken out contact lenses for the first time in a little school bathroom, crowded with Beverly and Eddie (Eddie cringed to think about it now looking back, because he was so obvious, wasn't he? in the way he stuck to Richie's warmth right by his side, right under his arm, like a parasite). Eddie had blanched, watching him try to slip the transparent discs out of his fucking eyes.

"That's so gross, that's so gross, that's so gross, Rich," he repeated like a mantra when Richie couldn't get it out the first time and began pressing into his eye with his finger. 

“How do you plan on getting those out?” He asked now. 

“Sheer willpower.” 

“So, wingin’ it?”

“Yeah. Wingin’ it.” 

After breakfast, Eddie put his coat back on and slipped back into his boots. Richie followed him, finding his sneakers and lacing them up. He zipped up his raincoat, too. Eddie watched him.

"Are you not going to wear more layers?" He asked, pulling his scarves around his neck. 

"I'm wearing two! The sweater's thick." 

"Are you going to wear gloves, at least?" 

Richie smiled crookedly down at him and said, "Sure." 

The gloves had skeleton bones on them. "I have a theme, Eds." Richie said when asked. It felt more Halloween-y than Christmas-y, in Eddie's honest opinion. Eddie had always liked Christmas more than him anyway, and vice versa with Richie and Halloween.

They left the house together. There was a noticeable gap between them as they walked, shoes sinking into the snow side by side but not as close as they once would be. They walked like that all the way to the bus stop, conversing lightly. It felt almost as if they were acquaintances, not best friends.

And, God, that was a devastating thought. Eddie couldn't lose this, above everything else, and why was he so fucking scared of that? Why was he so fucking scared to want something so much? 

Well, he knew the answers to those questions. Kind of. Knew it had something to do with never being allowed to like anything, much less boys, much less Richie. Eddie had never let himself want anything, and he could blame it on Sonia all he liked, but beyond anything he was just scared. And it was a process, he knew that, had heard it countless times from Mike and Beverly already, but really, truly, he was just scared. It wasn't that simple, but also, it really fucking was. 

Eddie stopped walking, and swung around to face Richie. Richie held his hands up in a sign of peace. Eddie, forcefully, moved forwards and wrapped his arms around Richie. And it felt like home. And Eddie knew, here at the bus stop in the middle of Derry, Maine, that this was what he'd been running towards. Home and safety and real real love.

Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie, too, bewildered. 

They stood like that for a long moment, and Eddie didn't cry this time, but he felt similarly relieved. He pulled away from the hug eventually, and bunched up handfuls of Richie's coat in his hands, feeling desperate in an uncharacteristic way. "Can we please go back to normal?" He asked. 

"Oh, thank _fuck_. Of fucking course we can!" Richie said, and that was that. They took a few more moments to unwrap from each other, and a few moments later the bus arrived and they boarded. They sat thigh-to-thigh and shoulder-to-shoulder and Eddie got to sit next to the window, so he was in a good mood. They both were. Richie’s eyes were sparkling every time Eddie glanced at him for the next ten minutes. 

The neighborhood whizzed by in the bus window, familiar houses and people reduced to a blur. Eddie had a feeling of deja vu. It reminded him almost of the road trips between Derry and St. Augustine, where everything seemed so small and far away. 

The air was crisp and cold as they made their way to the camera shop from the bus stop. Derry didn’t have a clearly defined shopping district the way St. Augustine did, it was more that the shops were scattered around town with no real consistency. There was no quaint alley-ways and jutted out signs labelling the little stores. What there _were_ were co-opted buildings alongside apartments with handmade signs in their windows. The camera shop was one of these buildings, with the words Derry Film Processing painted neatly onto their window. There was also a missing dog poster hanging there; there were no missing kid posters. 

Eddie and Richie squeezed into the store together, desperate to get out of the cold. 

“Hello, sirs!” A peppy voice called from behind the counter. 

Richie’s eyes crinkled in a silent laugh while Eddie’s nose crinkled in distaste. “Patty, we go to school together, you don’t have to call us sirs.” Eddie protested. 

“Store policy.” Patty said, much more sternly. 

“Your family runs the store, they can’t fire you.” 

Patty Blum and her family had moved to Derry a year earlier, from Pasadena, California. Eddie had never understood why, because, surely, California was better than Fuckall-Nowhere, Maine, but the Blums brought a much needed brightness to their town. They were popular, even though their camera store was purely based on Mr. Blum’s own passion for cameras films, and not on any real demand for a camera store in Derry. Eddie was pretty sure their only frequent visitors were Richie and Stan, who, interestingly, had never expressed a real interest in cameras before the Blums moved into town. 

Patty, today, had a sailor’s cap pulled over her curls and a pleasant, wintery song playing from the speakers. “You’re here for your Florida pictures?” She asked. 

“Yep,” said Richie. Patty nodded and told them she’d be right back, before disappearing into the backroom. 

Eddie took that moment to tune into the song that was playing, listening to the woman’s soothing voice play as they waited. Richie went to browse through the cameras and other equipment-- he’d always been somewhat of a film geek. 

_I’m writing your name on the glass,_ the woman sang, and Eddie felt his gut twist a little. 

Richie toggled with a stand that made a camera stand higher or shorter, and he laughed quietly to himself over a joke he didn’t say. Eddie had that feeling again, the wanting, the feeling as if he could never lose this. He didn’t know what he would do once high school ended. He didn’t know what he would do once _Christmas break_ ended. He’d never truly wanted to know what the future would hold, because on some level, he knew it would be similarly bleak. He knew his NYC apartment would be no better than his bedroom here in Derry, because he had seen, in real life, how he carried his Derry bubble everywhere he went. Miserable even in the prettiest city in the United States. 

Or maybe it wasn’t him. 

It was hard to peel apart his idea of himself and Sonia’s idea of him, sometimes. He didn’t know where she ended and he started. He thought, though, that the part of him that thought that the entire world was miserable was Sonia. Because he knew that couldn’t be true. He’d felt so fucking good before, he’d been joyous and in _love_. 

It was then that he had the small epiphany, that wherever he was going, he couldn’t bring Sonia with him. 

The other Losers had proper dreams. Richie had his comedy or filmmaking, Bev had her sewing and fashion, Mike had his history and stories. Eddie had always never known. 

The music dipped for a moment, and the lady in the recording asked, _are you lonely at night?_ and Eddie, for the first time in his life, identified the twisting in his stomach as a lovesickness.

Patty brought a thick, orange envelope from the backroom. “It looks like a wonderful city,” she said, handing it to Eddie and patting the top of his hand. Eddie knew Richie had paid up front, but he felt guilty then that he’d made Richie pay for his photos. 

“I’ll pay you back,” he said as they left the shop. 

“No! What the hell?” Richie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “This is part of your Christmas present.” 

Eddie pouted, and tried to convey the words _I will feel guilty about this for the rest of my life_ through his eyes. Richie did not relent. 

“You’re the one who’s always going on about Christmas spirit! You had a fucked up Christmas this year, anyway. You deserve it.” Richie shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. 

Eddie wandered closer to him as they walked, shoulders knocking against each other’s. He thought about how St. Augustine had been a trip for Sonia, but Richie did this for Eddie. Sonia didn’t try to be selfish, but she also didn’t make a conscious effort to do things for him. Eddie thought that might be why love made him feel sick to the stomach, physically nauseous, because of the selflessness of it. Because the people who loved each other trusted each other. 

They sat down at the bus stop this time, instead of lingering and hugging. Eddie turned over the envelope in his hands, finally getting the chance to look at it. On the backside, in a distinctly Patty Blum handwriting, it was labeled _For Richie Tozier (To Eddie Kaspbrak)_. Richie’s breath kind of hitched next to him. Eddie wondered how much Richie had told her about the camera and the pictures on it. Eddie flipped the envelope back over and picked at the metal seal, bending the two clasps through the hole and popping it open. He reached in and pulled out the pictures. They were smooth and slippery in his hand. 

The first ones were the ones they’d taken while still in Derry, some out of focus because Richie was still teaching him how to properly work a camera. There was something about seeing the Losers, encapsulated in these small images that Eddie could hold in his hand that felt profound. And then they reached the first St. Augustine pictures, and those took Eddie’s _and_ Richie’s breath away. 

St. Augustine -- the oldest city in the U.S.A. -- in all its history and majesty, slightly blurred from the inside of a moving vehicle. It was just the beginnings of the city, Eddie had stayed there for four days and he knew that there was so much more of the city to be seen, but looking at it here, he felt like he was only seeing it for the first time. 

“Professional photographer Eddie fuckin’ Kaspbrak.” Richie said, sounding genuinely in awe. Eddie flushed. 

“St. Augustine is photogenic,” he mumbled. 

The **_Ripley’s Believe It or Not!_ ** pictures were the most out of place, in between pictures of the sea and the architecture, but they were a big hit with the Richie Tozier audience. Eddie watched him hold them in his skeleton-gloved hands, and thought about how odd of a boy he’d chosen to be best friends with. 

Richie held up the picture of the wax man with the bugged-out eyes wearing a suit, and tried to cross his eyes the way the wax figure did. “Eds, look, it’s me,” he said, in what Eddie recognized as his Beetlejuice impression. None of it made any sense -- the wax figure didn’t look anything like Beetlejuice, it wasn’t even a pinstriped suit -- but Eddie laughed, loud and bursting in the empty, quiet neighborhood. 

Eddie’s favorite pictures were the ones of the water. Looking at them made an indescribable feeling well up in his chest, like the waves were inside him, like his feelings were the ocean itself. And then they got to the Night of Lights pictures, and _those_ became his favorite. Richie seemed to agree on that, thumbing at one of the ones with the Bridge of Lions, strung up with lights and burning bright in the middle of Matazanas Bay. Eddie handed it to him, and he didn’t say anything, just seemed enamored by it. 

The last St. Augustine picture was of the ocean and Eddie’s feet, the waves and foam riding on top of them. It had been their last day in St. Augustine, and the first time the weather was well and warm enough for him to stand out there and be at one with the ocean. Looking at that picture, Eddie felt that Ocean Feeling well up in his chest again, and thought _I want an apartment that overlooks the ocean_. “I wish I lived in an apartment that overlooked the ocean,” he said, aloud. 

Richie smiled at him strangely for that. 

The last pictures were on the road trip back to Maine, of checkered diner floors and neon signs in the dark. Eddie didn’t like them as much as the St. Augustine ones, but Richie thought they were genius. 

“These are all so fuckin’ good,” said Richie, and Eddie was inclined to agree. He felt happier than he had in months, being able to hold these things he’d made, like little pieces of himself, and little pieces of a city he loved. And he did. He’d spent four days in the city of St. Augustine, and he had fallen hopelessly in love with it. Eddie didn’t fall in love with many things that way, and he wanted to cling to it for all it was worth. 

Eddie grabbed Richie’s wrist and steadied his bulky watch to read the time. 3:20. They had ten minutes before the bus would arrive. “Okay, Rich. I have an idea.” 

They walked from the bus stop to a craft supplies store, where they virtually burst through the doorway and rushed through to find thumbtacks. Richie found a roll of string and clips easily. Eddie didn’t question, focusing too hard on getting in and out of the store in five minutes flat. The cashier rung them through boredly (Eddie paid this time), and they were out in four minutes. 

They took the bus back to Richie’s neighborhood, and biked to Eddie’s from there, the envelope of pictures in Richie’s basket and the plastic bag of supplies hanging off of Eddie’s handle. They stacked their bikes by the doorway. Eddie rung the doorbell, because he was seventeen and still didn’t have a key to his own house (even though he _knew_ they had spares). 

His mother opened the door and peered down at them, because the stairs were just a little lower than the doorway. “What are in those bags?” She asked as she let them in. 

“Photographs and some craft supplies, Mrs. K.” Richie said. 

Sonia eyed them shrewdly. Eddie half expected her to ask to see them, but she just waved them off dismissively instead, which made Eddie feel both relieved that she wouldn’t do that in front of Richie, and dreading the talking-to about keeping better company that he would have later. It made him almost sober up from the high of doing stupid shit with his best friend, but Eddie knew a thing or two about monsters that preyed on fear. 

Richie sensed his hesitation, though, because once they were upstairs, he said, “You can’t pussy out on me now, Eds, my toes are _freezing_ from being outside the house so much. Do you want my sacrifice to be for nothing?” 

“I would _hate_ it if your toes fell off.” Eddie said, elongating the _a_ in hate. Richie laughed. 

They poured out the photographs and supplies onto Eddie’s neatly-made bed, and Eddie retrieved fabric scissors from another room in the house. Richie sat on his knees on the floor, his arms folded on the bed. Eddie sat on the bed and looked down at him, placing the scissors next to their piles. 

“You’ve come to the right place, Mr. Kaspbrak,” said Richie, putting on a voice, “I am, after all, a World-Renowned Interior Designer.”

Eddie thought about Richie’s room-shaped wolf den. “Right,” he said, “because movie posters are the height of interior design.” 

“Hey! At the very least, I am good at putting things on walls.” Richie reached for the photographs, “Speaking of which, do you want to put up _all_ of these?” 

“No. Just the best ones.”

“Okay, and where?” 

Eddie immediately looked to the blank, piss-colored wall behind Richie. It was right in front of Eddie’s bed, and entirely empty, as it always had been, and it had driven Eddie crazy for years. It haunted him in his dreams. He pointed at it, “maybe… ten there.” He pointed at the wall his bed was sitting against, “and five there.” 

The five behind his bed would be four pictures of the Losers, and then the one of the Bridge of Lions during the Night of Lights at the center. The ten in front of his bed would be assorted, of the sea and the lights and the architecture and maybe like one from _Ripley’s._

Once they picked out the pictures, Eddie rolled out the ball of string and Richie held up its end and they eyeballed what length they thought would hold five photographs, and repeated that two more times until they had three uneven strings. Then, Richie pressed thumbtacks into each wall, and they tied each end of each string to a thumbtack. 

Eddie ripped open the bag of clips, each tan and made out of wood. He picked out fifteen.

Richie cracked his knuckles (Eddie cringed. It was one of those sounds that was just a _bad_ sound to hear, objectively, like the sound of a dying fourteen-year-old car). “The final stretch! How are we feeling, Kaspbrak?” He held an invisible microphone to Eddie’s mouth while Eddie clipped the clips to each string.

“Excited. Nervous. Rebellious.” Eddie said. 

“Wow, all at once?”

Eddie bent his knees to reach the lower string. “You ever feel like you haven’t let yourself have something simple for seventeen years of your life?” He asked nonchalantly, still speaking into the microphone. 

Richie raised the faux-mic to his mouth, “I am familiar with the feeling.” 

“It’s like… I’m finally letting myself want something, for real, and it’s terrifying.” Eddie furrowed his eyebrows, “I didn’t think I had the capacity to love something as much as I love…. St. Augustine. But I’m seventeen, and it’s time I come to terms with… shit, you know?” And he did want to come to terms with it, but he also knew it was a process. It had to be. 

“Uhh.” Richie raised the microphone to his mouth again, “That was Channel 5 news--” Eddie burst into laughter at that. 

Through laughs, he managed, That was supposed to be a Channel 5 reporter? What kind of fucking local news reporter goes up to someone and asks 'how are you feeling?'"

"What kind of interview-ee answers the question 'how are you feeling?' genuinely?" Richie asked, starting to laugh, too, like Eddie was contagious. 

"It was pretend!"

Their laughter quieted, and Eddie had spent the entire day swathed in Richie's laughter, so that the absence of it and the seriousness of what Richie was about to say was immediately evident.

“You’re changing, Eds,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Eddie tilted his head at him.

“In a good way.” Richie rushed to add. “This is sick,” he said, gesturing at the wall.

“Thanks,” said Eddie, genuinely. Richie pulled him into their second hug of the day, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t flinched away from Richie _once_ today. He thought, maybe, the safety and the homeliness cancelled out the fear. He needed time to truly not feel bugs crawling under his skin every time he thought about touching a boy or vomiting every time he got too lovesick, but the love itself was pure and untouched and ever-present and an Objective Fact. He couldn’t feel scared being with Richie, and he was sure about that.

Eddie clambered onto the bed to clip the last five clips onto the string there. Richie followed him, and scooped up the fifteen pictures. He handed five to Eddie, and went to put up the other ten. Eddie looked at each picture as he clipped it to the string. Every Loser was smiling, bright and immortalized.

When they were done, they scooped the craft supplies off the bed and sat down on the bed, and gazed upon their work. Eddie thought his room had never looked more alive, less like a memorial to a family he didn’t think was his family anymore. And _he’d_ made those photographs, by himself.

“I think I’ll take these to New York with me, too,” he said.

Richie smiled one of those smiles that made his entire face scrunch up, like you’d just said he’d won the lottery. “In your apartment overlooking the ocean?”

“In my apartment overlooking the ocean.” Eddie smiled, too. “It’s going to be lonely. Without you all.” And it was weird to talk about living alone. They were _still kids_ , in vaguely adult-shaped bodies.

Richie was silent for a beat longer than he would usually be, and Eddie glanced at him. He was staring at the photographs, intently not making eye contact with Eddie. “I’ve always wanted to be on SNL,” he said, and then grit his teeth the way he did when he was gearing up to get punched in the face.

“You would… come to New York with me?” Eddie asked, softly.

Richie made eye contact with him, then, looking disappointed. “Eddie. Do you think I won’t?”

And the answer was no. Richie pulled him into a side-hug.

“This is the most my room has ever felt like _my_ room.” Eddie admitted later.

“Just another service I provide.” Richie said, and then waited a moment before asking, “You really liked those lights in St. Augustine, huh?”

“I did,” said Eddie.

Richie made the face he made when he was having an Idea, but it disappeared after a moment. When he had to leave, they hugged each other like they didn’t want to let go. 

That night, Eddie was tired, but it wasn't the bone-deep tiredness, it was a light tiredness. It was buzzing in his heart and his face. And he really thought he would be okay.

+++

Over the next few days, Richie acted deeply suspicious. Eddie knew this man (“man” they were seventeen) like the back of his hand, and for the life of him, he couldn’t suss out what he was up to. But he was too distracted by New Year’s plans and preparations to care, until he walked in on Richie and Stan, both standing on his own bed, fiddling with a string of Christmas lights.

Eddie put his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ,” he said, exasperatedly.

“It was Stan’s idea.” Richie said bluntly.

“ _What?_ You didn’t call me until this morning!” 

Richie shrugged.

“What is the ‘idea’ supposed to be, exactly?” Eddie asked.

“Well, Stan thought--”

“No. Nope. I refuse to engage with this rhetoric. Work this shit out on your own, Tozier.” Stan hopped off of the bed, and clambered out through Eddie’s window.

Eddie waved his hands at Richie in confusion.

“I thought..” Richie breathed in deeply, “Well, okay, now it’s gonna sound dumb, but I thought… since you liked the lights in St. Augustine so much.. You might like you have a little piece of that _here_.”

Against all his will, Eddie’s face started to heat up. All he could think about were those movies where the guy did a grand romantic gesture for the girl, and sure, it wasn’t _perfect_ , but it was _love_.

“That’s so stupid. I love it, Richie,” he said, honestly.

Richie grinned, teeth and all.

And Eddie was still not at the point where he could confess to Richie, couldn’t think of a time he ever would be because Richie was straight and their friendship was good, but it was wonderful and it set him on fire every time he let himself want to kiss him. He was getting better at it. It went hand in hand with Mike’s mourning process thing, because as morbid as that sounded, he’d lost a lot. He’d been trying for a long, long time to maintain a positive relationship with his mother. Because she was the only family he had. But that wasn’t true. It was eons away from ever being true. The Losers _were_ his family, point blank. At the same time, his entire vision of the future was changing, because not being Sonia’s son meant he had to be Eddie fuckin’ Kaspbrak, homosexuality and all. So what he was mourning was everything she wanted him to be.

See? He was _processing_ things now.

Later that evening, once the sun had set, Richie stopped Eddie in the middle of a rant to say, “Wait. I have to show you something.”

He hopped off the bed, and turned off the lights. Eddie felt when he got on the bed again, and he _saw_ when he flicked on the Christmas light. It was just a little sector of a Christmas light string, but each of the lights sparkled like a star inside of Eddie’s own room.

The window was not closed, and Eddie looked between the moonlight and the Christmas lights. Richie’s face was illuminated on one side by artificial yellow and illuminated on the other by a natural glow.

Eddie waved his arms around, towards the window and towards the lights and all he could come up with to say was, “This is everything I’ve ever loved in my life.”

It didn’t sound coherent to him, but Richie seemed to get it. Richie pushed his chest fondly, "How do you fit so much emotion in that little body?"

And Eddie was taken aback by how much he trusted him. He always had. ( _Oh, so that's what love is supposed to feel like._ )

Eddie watched the snow and the lights play against each other, and he thought something deep about water and its changing and various forms, and about how the water in the ocean in St. Augustine, the whole height of the country away from Derry, could very well be the water in the snow here. 

_oh la Venezia_

_mi fa cosi bene_

_esco ogni sera e vado a ballare_

_che ben atmosfera, che bellissima neve_

_non ce proprio niente che mi posso mancare_

_(_ _oh, Venice_

_it does me so good_

_i go out every evening and go dancing_

_that a beautiful atmosphere, what a beautiful snow_

_there’s really nothing i can miss)_

**Author's Note:**

> anyway that was my fan fiction :] i dont think it's that bad but if it was tell me in the comments <3 
> 
> i know it's spring now, but i did start writing this on december 28th. ive put a lot into this so i am asking you to suspend your disbelief . 
> 
> i think i mentioned in the 1st notes that i haven't posted a fanfic in a year; i'd really like to get back into writing this year. & this felt like something i needed to get out of my system before i really jump into the real fics. it's much more character and thought-oriented than my fics would normally be and not as fun as i like to think my writing can be, but i needed to write it so i could stop thinking about this fucking trip to st augustine. 
> 
> my two favorite google searches to come out of this fic are "bill hader young" and "ripley's believe it or not st augustine yelp" 
> 
> tumblr: @eyebqll


End file.
